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Episode 307: A Wider View of Election Night / Choosing Your News Channel

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How do you choose?

While the presidential race is still in litigation, things look quite good for Republicans down-ballot. At the very least (assuming good turnout in Georgia for the 2 Senate seat runoffs), Democrats’ more radical agenda items may be stopped.

How do you choose your news channel? Is it that it shows you the slant you want? If so, maybe “news” isn’t what you’re looking for.

Mentioned links:

Not Yet Called Races and State Elections

Here’s What You Need to Know About Georgia

Companies Are Preparing to Cut Jobs and Automate if Biden Gets $15 Minimum Wage Hike, Reporting Shows

Friday, Nov. 13 Scoreboard: Morning Joe Finishes Week as No. 1 Cable News Morning Show For First Time Since 2001

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Show transcript

So where do we stand regarding the election? Well, the presidential one is still being litigated, but I still think this is going to be a Joe Biden win. We’ve heard a lot of sound and fury from Rudi Giuliani. There are many affidavits that allege irregularities or fraud. But I haven’t heard evidence of big vote swings or enough fraud / error in enough states to turn this one around. Listener Ken, a college buddy of mine, disagrees with that assessment and has been writing in the Facebook group about why he thinks so. Join all of us there, especially you who are still only on the Facebook page.

There’s a link in the show notes to a post written back on the 16th from the blog The New Reformed Club. Some of the races have likely been called since then (I know a Utah House one has, at least), but it give more of a wider look at the election in general. First off, we all know that the majority in the Senate rests on the outcome of the 2 seats headed to a runoff in my neck of the woods; Georgia. I have another link in the show notes to an analysis by Georgia native Erick Erickson as to why the Republicans should be fine in the runoff. I would add they’ll be fine if Georgia Republicans turn out as they did on Election Day. Don’t get lazy.

But moving on to the House, there were, at the time the blog post was written, 11 uncalled House races—the Republicans lead in 8 and the Democrats lead in 3. Those races were not final, but if the numbers hold up, the House will be 222 Democrats to 213 Republicans. That would be a loss of 13 seats for the Democrats in a year where they expected to gain.

Regarding governorships, of the 8 up for re-election, 7 of the incumbents won. In Montana, however, it flipped from Democrat to Republican, giving that state complete Republican control of its government.

Regarding state legislatures, both legislative houses of New Hampshire went from Democrat to Republican. The governor is Republican, so New Hampshire is now a Republican-controlled state.

So overall, all the way down the ballot, the Republicans had a good night, and after the Georgia runoffs for the US Senate, a Biden administration should be neutered enough to keep some of its more radical agenda items away from the desk of the Oval Office. For a guy who likely lost the election, Trump certainly had coattails.


On November 12th, the Wall Street Journal reported that Chief Financial Officers at top American companies are considering raising prices, cutting workers’ hours and investing in automation. Is this in anticipation of more COVID issues? Nope, this is in anticipation of Joe Biden pushing for a $15 minimum wage.

Yeah I know that I’ve hit this topic a lot over the years, but I think it’s worth a reminder once in a while that increasing the price of something, in this case labor, means that people (or corporations, or small businesses) buy less of it and try to figure out how to do with less.

Anyway, had to check in with this.


One of the big news stories about the news this week was that Morning Joe, the morning show on MSNBC, was the #1 cable news morning show for the first time since 2001. This is part of the big move away from the Fox News Channel ever since election night. And it’s something I don’t quite understand.

Yes, FNC was always a bit right-of-center in what it covered and how it covered the news, to say nothing of its opinion shows (and I’m not). Some studies I saw, though, put it less far to the right than most other mainstream news outlets were to the left. If you balanced out your viewing of any other broadcast or cable news with Fox, you were, in general, getting all the news.

But is all it took to drag down Fox’s ratings was to call Arizona as early as it did on election night? Really? And now there’s a move to switch over to One America News. Now, I’ve been aware of OAN for about a year now, by cruising up and down the news channels in the 200s from my cable provider, and was interested in OAN. For example, when others were running their opinion shows, often OAN was still just running the day’s news, including international. I liked that. So I would often turn to them when I was tired of the opinionators. The thing I noticed over the long haul is that OAN was like FNC only more so; their editorial voice was further to the right than Fox and more obvious. So I found myself turning less and less to OAN.

But people who are now saying that FNC has found its place with the mainstream media on the left are sliding over a few channels to OAN, which has made a name for itself in the past 6 months or so. So my question is, are those people just looking for the slant they want? You could say that Fox viewers were doing the same thing, but I would argue that, as I said, Fox did cover the stories fairer than most of the mainstream media did, often showing both sides when the MSM often didn’t even acknowledge there was another side. But OAN is the MSNBC of the Right, which isn’t a compliment.

To be honest, I get most of my news online these days. I’m an avid watcher of Tucker Carlson, which apparently a whole bunch of people are, but I go to him for stories to watch out for. He’s an opinion guy doing an opinion show, just like I am, so that grain of salt is a requirement. But if you’re going to watch OAN, keep that salt handy.

But again, why? If all you want from your news channel is adulation of your side, whatever side that is, maybe news isn’t for you.

The post Episode 307: A Wider View of Election Night / Choosing Your News Channel appeared first on Consider This!.


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